Sunday, October 27, 2013

PERFECT MATCH by Kristan Higgins

Publisher:  Harlequin

Date published:   October 29, 2013
ISBN 978-0373778195
Genre:   Contemporary Romance
Book format: Electronic ARC
Obtained via:  Publisher
Reviewed by name and email address:  Gina Gina@loveromancesandmorereviews.com




Honor Holland was always the practical one, the one who the rest of the family turned to when they wanted a make sense, concrete solution. She is the one who has run the family owned Blue Herron Winery and created its marketing plans. And Honor has a secret. Oh, she’s alluded to younger sister, Faith, that she’s been seeing a man—she just hasn’t been ready to tell her family about him.

After a visit to the family doctor, who was at one time Faith’s finance, Honor is determined to find herself a husband and have a child or two. In fact she has the perfect man for her—the guy she has loved for almost her whole life—Brogan Cain. When Honor proposes to him though, Brogan not only breaks her heart, he goes a bit further and tramps on it by becoming engaged to Honor’s best friend.

Devastated as losing Brogan, especially to someone she trusted to have her back, Honor accepts a blind date set up by her grandmother.

Tom Barlow is a mechanical engineer, a Brit and a force of nature—at least to Honor. Her initial reaction to him is that he needs to get out of her way and stay out of her way. But Tom has something she wants. Actually a couple of somethings she wants…and Tom needs something Honor has. With their personal goals in mind Tom and Honor decide to tie the knot.

But there are some flies in their ointment.  Tom needs a green card and if Honor marries him for anything less than love they could both be guilty of fraud and jailed for said crime. And, Honor isn’t quite over Brogan. Yet there is something about Tom that Honor just can’t walk away from.

Can two people find a perfect match in an imperfect situation?

I’ve spent a few days thinking about just how I really felt about Kristan Higgins’s PERFECT MATCH, book two of her Blue Herron series.  I didn’t like Tom and Honor very much. In fact for most of the story I didn’t care for either character—very much like I never warmed up to Levi and Faith in book 1, THE BEST MAN.  In THE BEST MAN, Levi broke up Faith’s dream wedding to the love of her life, Jeremy. Well actually Jeremy did the breaking up when Levi revealed that Jeremy was gay….on his and Faith’s wedding day. I never quite got the reason why he waited for so long or why he felt it was his business.  Maybe if he’d told Faith that he felt the need to step up because he was in love with her I could have gotten behind the wedding fiasco. It was just an unresolved issue.

In THE PERFECT MATCH Honor tries to do the right thing for the wrong reason. But she comes across like a doormat when she pretty much forgives Brogan for his treatment of her, reconsiders telling her then former best friend Dana that it was okay she stole the man Honor loved and then there is Tom. In pretty much the first 2/3 of the book Tom is either wishing for a drink, having a drink or recovering from a night of drinking.  It is never actually stated that he is an alcoholic and yes, alcoholics can fall in love—but it did not make him an endearing character. On top of that he is abusive and often just rude and nasty to Honor…and she finds herself in love with him. I believe the term would be co-dependent.

Jessica Dunn is a character that adds quite a bit to the story. I do hope she gets her own story along the way because I feel there is a lot of depth to her. What had me scratching my head though was that at the end of book 1 Jessica is flying out of state to go to school…and in book 2 she is back to her waitressing job and hired at the Blue Herron without a mention of what happened in school.

But there are parts of the book I really enjoyed.  The “eggs” cracked me up and when too many pages would go by without their appearance I kind of missed them and their little quips.  They added a great dose of humour to the story as did the banter between Goggy and Pops.

You do not have to read book 1 to enjoy book 2 as the backstory from THE BEST MAN is woven nicely into THE PERFECT MATCH.  I will read book 3, WAITING ON YOU when it is available in 2014 to catch up with the characters I’ve enjoyed.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement this book.


 

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